Thursday, April 3, 2014

Students and business owner benefit from analysis class exercise

The “winning” team of Scott Zengri, Marissa Jacobs, Cody Sprague and Elizabeth Rodriguez with the salon owner and class instructor Michael Ratajczyk.

Students in the Information Systems for Business Intelligence class got some hands-on experience with small-business consulting, and in the process gave a local Winona business owner information and a tool she can use to grow her business. The “client” for the class project was the co-owner of the Hair Gallery salon in downtown Winona.

Four groups of students were given hand-written raw data about customer names, frequency of appointments, and services and products purchased at the salon. Their task was to customize a customer relationship management (CRM) tool for the business, and perform a business analysis to identify trends and opportunities for business growth. The salon owner was pleased to receive executive summaries of each report, and she will incorporate one of the CRM spreadsheets directly into her business management.

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